{"id":1332,"date":"2011-10-18T15:27:31","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T19:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=1332"},"modified":"2011-10-18T15:27:31","modified_gmt":"2011-10-18T19:27:31","slug":"film-review-moneyball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2011\/10\/18\/film-review-moneyball\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Review: Moneyball"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not a baseball fan. I watch a handful of games per year to appease my baseball-loving father. I walked into the theater to see Moneyball<\/em> doubtful; however, as soon as the film started rolling, I was blown away.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon \u2013 \u00a9 2011 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Set in 2001, Moneyball<\/em> tells the story of Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), general manager of the Oakland A\u2019s. He was a first-round draft pick, but couldn’t make it in the Major League. Instead, he became a scout and eventually general manager. \u00a0After a very good season that resulted in almost<\/em> getting into the World Series, the three star players of the A\u2019s – Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen – were traded off to other, wealthier teams. Billy is left with a broken team, and pocket change with which to rebuild. By chance, Billy meets a Yale graduate with a degree in economics at the Cleveland Indians’ office named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). Peter has a revolutionary theory about building teams. Instead of taking the players who only get the most hits, he suggests taking the players that the MLB usually ignores by considering their statistics.<\/p>\n

Moneyball<\/em> is anything but your average inspirational sports movie. With a cutting screenplay co-written by Aaron Sorkin (of The West Wing <\/em>and The Social Network<\/em> fame), the film depicts a character study of Billy Beane and an human experiment caught on camera. It is a truly underdog tale, and teaches some good lessons on the worth of the overlooked.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon \u2013 \u00a9 2011 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brad Pitt does a fantastic job playing a very interesting man whom we root for much, much more than we ever do for the players. In fact, there is very little emphasis on the players; only a few names are even mentioned, and the number of those that are focused on for any length of time is even smaller. Jonah Hill, usually known as the raunchy funny man, steps out of his element from his more serious, dryly humorous role as Peter Brand. He makes this transition beautifully. All images of Superbad<\/em> fled my mind as I watched the young actor huddled in front of a monitor studying a game of baseball. The film\u2019s third major actor is Philip Seymour-Hoffman, who plays manager Art Howe. He acts as the film\u2019s main human antagonist, who is resistant of Billy and Peter\u2019s changes. Hoffman is a delight to watch.<\/p>\n

The acting is phenomenal, the story is interesting and exciting, and it just makes you feel good to watch. Fans of Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour-Hoffman, baseball, Billy Beane, or of people in general will not be disappointed. Who knows, you may walk out of the theater a baseball fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not a baseball fan. I watch a handful of games per year to appease my baseball-loving father. I walked into the theater to see Moneyball doubtful; however, as soon as the film started rolling, I was blown away. Set in 2001, Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), general…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[242,324,810,1069,1434],"class_list":["post-1332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","tag-baseball","tag-brad-pitt","tag-film","tag-inspirational","tag-mlb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}